At the sight of the first Endeavour, the natives of New Zealand were amazed and afraid, describing the vessel with its yards of flying canvas as a "bird of great size and beauty" and "a houseful of divinities." Astonishment quickly gave way to curiosity—the same emotion which drew thousands to wharves around the country this summer to inspect a sailing replica of one of history's greatest ships of discovery. For volunteer crew—here shortening sail in a freshening blow—the work of hauling rope and climbing shrouds was a chance to taste 18th century exploration and to relive momentous events in this country's history.

Publishing is invariably a one-sided relationship. You produce words, pictures, illustrations, then print and despatch them, as if tying messages to the feet of so many carrier pigeons.
Occasionally a message comes back. And no matter what its content—whether affirmation or disagreement—there is joy in the completing of the loop.
That is why any editor counts the humble task of opening the mail to be one of the highlights of the job. (Fans of on-line literature say that one of the great advantages of the Internet is its capacity for allowing instant feedback from reader to writer, and thus enabling the development of communi­cation relationships of tremendous—perhaps unnerving—intimacy.)
In a very modest way, New Zealand Geographic has just been through an exercise in completing the loop. In February, we sent a readership survey to 1100 people chosen at random from our 24,000 subscribers, asking them a variety of questions about the magazine and soliciting their comments and suggestions.
Here are some of the things we learned about you, our readers. Both men and women responded to the survey in equal numbers (593 responses in all). Two-thirds of respondents are over the age of 40. One third are university graduates, while a further 16 per cent have had some university training. Twenty per cent have completed some technical or trade training.
Fully two-thirds of those surveyed have been subscribing to the magazine for three years or more, and several respondents told us with pride that they were foundation subscribers.
On the matter of how many issues we publish per year, 67 per cent said they were happy with the current quarterly arrangement. Twenty-five per cent suggested we move to bi­monthly publication.
Publishing six times a year has its attractions. It would give us the chance to produce a more satisfying spread of articles during the year. On the other hand, we don't want to thrust a new issue on readers when they haven't adequately digested the previous one. For most people, the lament "So much to read; so little time" is a recurring refrain of modern living.
According to the survey results, we seem to be getting the balance of articles right. More than 80 per cent of respondents expressed high or extreme interest in the diverse subject range we embraced in New Zealand Geographic. Several offered suggestions for future stories, ranging from shipbuilding to law enforcement, tramping routes in the Rimutakas to the history of New Zealand's Irish settlers.
(To the several people who asked what has happened to the promised rail article, your patience is about to be rewarded: a feature article and poster on the Main Trunk Line is scheduled to appear in the next issue.)
The magazine appears to be playing an important educational role in both homes and schools. One respondent told us our articles not only help with school projects, they settle family disputes! A teacher said she regularly uses the anecdotes within stories to spice her school lessons.
As expected, a love of the outdoors is a characteristic most readers share. Of the 94 per cent who say they have a high or extreme interest in New Zealand locations, 50 per cent actually lace up their tramping boots and get out there, and 34 per cent go camping.
One respondent took us to task for asking whether readers "exercised to keep fit." This question "makes us appear to be couch potatoes," she wrote. "In fact, we derive a great deal of exercise rowing, setting and retriev­ing flounder nets and longlines, dredging for scallops and painting and maintaining our boats. We also maintain a large vegetable garden. In my opinion anyone who has to exercise to keep fit hasn't got enough to do!"
We are grateful to all who com­pleted the survey.* To those who were not included on this occasion, any comments you have about the maga­zine are always welcome.
Entomologists aside, there probably aren't too many people in the world who would describe cockroaches as "jewels." Earlier this year, I met someone who does: Tony Maturin, whom I found in his summer quarters in the Greenstone Valley.
Tony is a Department of Conserva­tion volunteer but warden at McKellar Hut, at the Fiordland end of the Greenstone Track . When he is in residence during January and February he occupies a single sparsely furnished room at one end of the hut.
After we had introduced ourselves and shared a meal of rice custard and hibiscus tea, Tony invited me to join him in a search for jewels of the night—cockroaches and other six- or eight-legged gems.
To step into pitch black beech forest at 11 P.M. looking for bugs is an experience not to be missed. With only mediocre torch and hissing lantern light, we picked our way across the spongy soil, stepping over moss-covered logs, ducking to avoid low branches and spider webs. Our only real guide to location was the sound of the Greenstone River 20 metres away.
Periodically we would pause, hold the lantern up to a tree trunk and scan it for life. Here a harvestman—a black droplet of tissue atop eight spindle-thin legs; there a cave weta, fawn and chocolate mottled, resting on a cluster of white fungal caps; and, sure enough, a native cockroach the colour of hokey pokey, glistening as though freshly varnished, stopped in its tracks by the light.
These sightings—few and brief and memorable—are what draw me back and back to the New Zealand forest. I am sure it is the same response Thoreau felt when he wrote in his journal, "I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they really are, grand and beautiful."
By the fact that 88 per cent of respondents to our survey listed high or extreme interest in this country's natural heritage, I know I am in good company.
A company I am proud to keep.

In the spring of 1995—maybe earlier—an incon­spicuous moth identified as Orgyia thyellina, the white-spotted tussock moth, arrived in New Zealand from the Orient. Perhaps, like many a sailor before, it jumped ship on the Auck­land waterfront. By the time the gaudily coloured caterpillars produced by the species were brought to the attention of scientists from the New Zealand Forest Research Institute (NZFRI) on April 17, 1996, they were plentiful over several square kilometres of the tasteful Auckland suburbs of Mission Bay and Kohimarama—and causing concern over their possible impact on New Zealand flora.
In its native range (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and eastern Russia) the species goes through either two or three generations per year, depending on the severity of the climate. The first two generations are "normal," in that they consist of fully-winged male and female moths, but in the last generation for the season decreasing day length triggers a change in the morphology of the female: she emerges from her cocoon with tiny stubs of wings, and is incapable of flight.
These flightless females mate and lay their eggs on their own cocoons, or very nearby, and it is these eggs which are the overwintering stage of the insect. Unlike normal summer eggs, which hatch within two weeks, these overwintering eggs are larger and darker in colour.
Local observations so far suggest that, in terms of life history, the moth is behaving here as it does in Japan.
At FRI in Rotorua, white-spotted tussock moths are being reared in quarantine to determine which plants they can feed on. By artificially increasing the apparent day length to which late-season caterpil­lars are exposed in the week or two before they pupate, normal-winged females result, which lay rapid-hatching rather than overwintering eggs.
To date, mature caterpillars in Auckland have consumed a disconcertingly wide range of local broadleafed plants including plums, cherries, grapefruit,geraniums, roses and maples, but no conifers. While Orgyia (despite the sound of its name) is not considered a major pest in its natural environment, predators which may control it mere are unlikely to exist here, increasing tile potential threat.
As expected, young caterpillars are proving more selective in their feeding than older individuals. Preliminary results on timber species indicate that red beech and at least one species of Eucalypt (regnans) support the growth of young caterpillars, but Pinus radiata and douglas fir do not.
It is likely that the infected area of Auckland will be sprayed with a biological control agent when caterpillars emerge in tile spring.
Bacillus thurigenensis strain K, a naturally occurring bacterium, would almost certainly be used for this task. The strain kills only larvae of moths and butterflies, and is harmless to other insects and organisms. It has been successfully used in North America to control the related and voracious Asian gypsy moth.

"Look over here. Not many people know what these are used for," says Richard Spark, indicating several metre-long steel augers. "Used for drilling holes in rock by hand when you have to place dynamite charges for blasting. I picked them up for $2 each. This longer one was used in limestone. And I actually found that old detonator box. Only one I've ever seen."
I've seen them. On Westerns and the odd TV advert, and am hesitant about pushing down the plunger, even if there aren't any leads snaking out. Imagine being responsible for blowing up this lot.
I'm with Spark in his private museum, Northbrook, on the out­skirts of Rangiora. Precise, businesslike, taciturn, the man is a dairy farmer (380-cow herd), chairperson of the local Methodist parish, and has served for years on school boards and the like.
Over the last dozen years he has somehow found time to accumulate a gargantuan collection of everything pertaining to local history, and to display it in a couple of 700 square-metre sheds near his house. Inside, the paraphernalia stretches from floor to roof, packed in as tightly as fans at a free concert. Tungsten bulbs impart a subdued glow that enhances the nostalgia.
Items of every type and time vie for attention. Well, perhaps not every time. The bulk of the collection spans the 1920s to 1960, although there are plenty of older items. Toys, tobacco tins, 100 chocolate boxes (mostly empty), 80 household irons, pencils, ink bottles, porce­lain electrical insulators, petrol tins, groceries, a manual telephone exchange, hundreds of enamelled advertising signs, books, pills and potions, a butcher's shop, hot water bottle precursors, veterinary and dental equipment, baby feeding bottles, hand-turned washing machines, certifi­cates, dozens of old cameras, mincers, lawnmowers, scales, household and pet insecticides, bricks, clothes, radios, churns—I've scarcely scratched the surface.
In the grocery and household supplies section many of the containers are unopened and full. For quite a few products there may be a dozen pots, each with a label representing a different era. So the seven or eight tins of Clever Mary ("the enemy of grease") each hears a label in a different style, and ditto with Robinson's Barley and Robinson's Groats, the many big tins of baking and custard powder, and hundreds of others. I'm ambushed by shelves of names that lurk in my memory from childhood, but haven't crossed the threshold of consciousness in decades. Vim. Lifebuoy health soap. Reckitt's Blue Bag. Creamota. Starch (for stiffening collars and shirts).
In the dispensary section there are dozens of quaint little boxes and tins containing pills of boundless, but unspecified, efficacy—Dr Williams Pink Pills for Pale People, De Witt's, Beecham's Patent Pills. If their numbers and variety are any guide, laxatives (including Brooklax, the British chocolate laxative) and enemas (such as the Seamless Enema and syringe, warranted not to split, polished end) seemed to play an indispensable role in keeping a younger nation on its feet.
Ingredients in some of the potions (mercury, opium, arsenic, antimony) suggest that surviving some treatments ranked among life's greater challenges. A treadle-operated drill in the dental surgery is a monu­ment to misery of a different sort in the good ol' days.
Many of the bottles whose contents were once of a more spirituous nature carry notes such as "Dog's Head Nip'—two bottles bought by Ken Rowe, Rangiora, on way to Blenheim, 1936."
The books—hundreds of them—bear the charm of a bygone, more paternalistic age. There is The Lady's and Gentleman's Letter Writer, a guide to correspondence on all subjects; The Young Wife's Advice Book, a guide for mothers on health and self management; Ward and Lock's Long Life Series.
Yet another guide, to driving around the country circa 1930, indicates, to my surprise, that routes haven't changed much, although travel times have shrunk as the surfaces and quality of roads have improved.
Motor vehicles are absent (there is no room), but there is an ample supply of lesser machines. From the days when muscles were built by work, not gym, are chainsaws so vast that even two men must have strug­gled to wield them.
There's a photocopier from 1958! (Rangiora must have led the world here—the rest of us were inhaling Gestetner fumes for another decade.) An 1880s device for generating smoke to pump down rabbit burrows. Rat and mouse traps. Ancient vacuum cleaners. Wooden wheel chairs. A circular knitting machine (for hats and socks). Such imagina­tion; such boundless manufacturing diversity.
All this absorbing clutteration grew from Richard's interest in preserving a few relics to do with dairy farming a dozen or so years ago. How does a busy farmer find time to pursue this massive under­taking?
Sparks is candid: "We make time for the things that we really want to do, don't we, but all this would have been quite impossible without my wife Dawn's support and help. Every Saturday I go to garage sales and auctions looking for stuff, but these days I have to be pretty selective.
"People now know that I'm interested in preserving this sort of material, and often contact me when they have something of interest, or when an old building or business is being closed. Even some of the auction­eers and antique dealers in Christchurch pass items my way when they can't sell them.
"That's how I came by this butter extruder. It would have come from a hotel once. The barrel is filled with butter, and turning the handle squeezes out a dob of butter with nicely sculpted edges for a customer. Beautifully made. Just look at all that gearing.
"Sometimes I'm given items because nobody can remember what they were used for. This thing here took me a while to figure out. It's a device for helping to get long riding boots off. Saves bending over, and maybe keeps mud off your sleeves."
Perhaps this fascination with preserving the past is hereditary. Richard's brother John restores old tractors, and has a substan­tial collection not far away.

Almost driven to extinction for their meat, oil, bone and baleen, humpback whales are making a comeback, not only in the seas, but in human consciousness. With their haunting songs and evidence of culture—even language—they are now embraced as mysterious long-neglected kin, perhaps a seat of wisdom deeper and more enduring than our own; icons of oceans too long abused.

The summer of 1995-96 was the warmest for six years. December in particu­lar broke records, with a number of places in Northland, Bay of Plenty, Manawatu and Wairarapa recording highest ever December temperatures. Levin, for example, where records go back a hundred years, had a record 28.5°C on the 21st, and Te Kuiti, where records go back 33 years, had a record 32.0°C on the 3rd. Many places also had highest ever average temperatures for the month.
High air temperatures over New Zealand com­monly result from warm air masses moving down over the country from tropical latitudes. This is what happened last summer, when north-easterly airstreams affected the country more frequently than usual.
Among the more dra­matic visitations from the north are depressions formed from the remains of tropical cyclones. Fortu­nately, this season saw nothing to compare with the Cyclone Bola floods of 1988. In fact, summer was con­spicuous for the lack of tropical cyclones—possibly because of stronger than average trade winds associated with a weak La Nifia event (see New Zealand Geographic, Issue 2). The stronger trades are likely to have inhibited the formation of tropical cyclones by disrupting the low-level wind patterns necessary for their development (Issue 13).
However, there were several close encounters with decaying cyclones in March. One of these brought prolonged heavy rain to Gisborne and Hawkes Bay at the end of the month, but damage to agriculture was slight because most of the vulnerable crops had been harvested.
A much greater risk was posed by the remains of tropical cyclone Atu, which it was feared, would hammer Gisborne and Hawkes Bay with easterly gales and flood-producing rains on March 16. In the event, the low passed slightly further to the east than expected, and the region escaped with little rain.
The difficulty with forecasting the track of Atu as it left the tropics lay with timing the approach of a trough of low pressure from the west in mid-latitudes.
The tropical cyclone was moving slowly east-south­east to the north of New Zealand and was expected to swing south-south-east and accelerate as it came under the influence of the trough. This in fact happened, but the transition to a more southerly course was delayed by about nine hours from that expected three days in advance.
During this time, the tropical cyclone had moved another 150 kilometres further east, and as it swung southwards it was just far enough to the east to spare Gisborne and the rest of the North Island.
Although tropical cyclones were sparse last summer, there were a num­ber of other low pressure systems moving out of the tropics that brought heavy rain to parts of New Zea­land. One easterly storm in late January caused surface flooding in Gisborne as well as bringing record-breaking rainfall to Raoul Island north-east of the North Island. The rainfall on Raoul was 362 mm in the 48 hours up to 9 A.M. on 24 January—the highest rainfall there since records began in 1937.
The combination of high temperatures and moisture seems to have been partly responsible for reports of unusually high numbers of insects that occurred in many places around the country. In Gisborne there were reports of hundreds of thousands of Tasmanian beetles; in Christchurch, a minor plague of lady birds; fleas were a problem in Auckland, while flies were more abundant than usual in Wellington. In the McKenzie basin, fly-strike became a problem for sheep; in most years conditions are too dry for this.
Booms and crashes of insect and animal populations have been recorded as far back as Biblical times, and it is likely that the weather has had a role to play in triggering many of them. One of the ways this happens is through the effect the weather has on plants that provide food resources for animals.
For example, flowering and seed production in beech trees varies consider­ably from year to year. In years of great abundance—known as "mast years"—there can be a fifty-fold increase in productivity of seeds. In these years all three beech species (red, silver, mountain) may respond at the same time, along with other plants such as alpine tussock. Although the trigger mechanism is not completely understood, there is strong evidence that hot dry conditions in late summer and autumn will be followed by a mast year in the following spring and summer.
The abundant food supplies in mast years provide excellent conditions for the breeding of forest birds such as kaka. Indeed, in years where seed produc­tion is poor, these birds do not even attempt to breed.
A good example of the effect of the weather on bird breeding occurred in the Galapagos Islands near Ecuador during the 1982-83 El Nino. Persistent torren­tial rains caused an explosion of plant life with plentiful seeds, so that young female finches began breeding at the age of three months, whereas normally they do not begin breeding until the age of two years.
Ecologists hope that a better understanding of the cues that forests give birds as to when to breed will help with the breeding in captivity of endangered species such as the kakapo.
Mast years in the South Island beech forests are also good years for mice. The abundant flowering of the trees in spring is followed by a rapid increase in the number of caterpillars. Some of these fall to the ground, providing food for mice, which then breed more vigorously themselves. When the beech seeds fall a couple of months later, the mice benefit again. Eventually the mouse population is so large that extreme pressure is brought to bear on their food resources, and they begin to migrate from their home territories.
At this stage roads become dotted with mice flattened by cars, and trout become gorged on mice that have either drowned as they tried to cross streams, or been eaten alive as they were swimming.
The black death which decimated Europe in the fourteenth century may have been caused by a weather event impacting on the animal world. In 1332, there was a series of great floods in China alleged to have killed around seven million people and countless animals. It is speculated that in the wake of the floods there was an explosion of the rat popula­tion feeding on dead animals. When food for the rats ran low they radiated out of China, taking the bubonic plague with them. In a period of 18 months, one third of the Earth's population from India to Iceland succumbed to the disease.
A more recent example of rodent-borne disease occurred in the USA in 1993, when dozens of people living in the Four Corners region were killed by an outbreak of hantavirus. Again the weather was involved, as heavy rains and snows in the spring of 1992 in New Mexico caused the desert to bloom, leading to an abundance of pinon nuts and grasshoppers. This was followed by a ten-fold increase in the population of deer mice, which proved to be carriers of the infection.
Food supplies are not the only way the weather can get to animals. After Cyclone Andrew devastated parts of Florida and Louisiana several years ago, an estimated 182 million fish died. The wind knocked so many trees and branches into the water that dissolved oxygen was depleted when the organic matter decayed, causing the fish to suffocate.
But the interaction between weather and animals is often more subtle than this. For example, it has long been known that browsing animals such as giraffes travel slowly upwind as they feed. It has been thought that the reason for this was to move away from predators stalking down­wind. But it has now been discovered that some trees, on being browsed, rapidly alter the chemical balance in their leaves to make them unpalatable and even toxic to animals. Some of the chemicals escape into the air when the leaves are crushed, and trees downwind can detect these chemicals and begin to alter their own chemistry before they are attacked.
The weather stories that usually make the headlines are of the type that came through from Morocco recently. Heavy rains induced a swarm of snails to emerge and cover, among other things, a stretch of the Casablanca to Fez railway, halting an express train that lost its grip on the slime.
With all these stories of the weather influencing animals, the question arises: Can animals influence the weather? Surprisingly, the answer is an emphatic "yes." Microscopic organisms termed phytoplankton that live in the oceans in their billions play a crucial role in cloud formation. When damaged or attacked, phytoplankton release dimethysulphoniopropionate into the sea, some of which gets into the air as dimethylsulphide, which helps to make most of the condensation nuclei on which cloud droplets form.
A large change in the number of phytoplankton could have a significant impact on climate by altering the amount of cloud cover. Whether or not the meek inherit the earth, they definitely affect how much rain falls upon it.

Photographing Endeavour on its recent visit provided moments of magic and fear for Geoff Mason, who has worked on several New Zealand Geographic assignments, including moa, pine and a trek across East Cape. He crossed Cook Strait on the ship to Picton, and then sailed on to Lyttelton. "Welcomes in both harbours were amazing, the sort of thing that the first Whitbread yachts received in Auck­land," he said.
Just as impressive, but in a rather different way, was Endeavour's passage from Tory Channel into Cook Strait—with Mason perched on the tip of the bowsprit, trying to line up a shot of an interisland ferry following Endeavour. "We went from calm water into a six-metre swell in an instant, and the end of the bowsprit started to hurtle up and down through an arc of about 15 metres. One minute I was in danger of getting catapulted into the sky, and a second or two later I was close to being submerged. Did I risk staying to get my shot, or crawl back?" Needless to say, he stayed, but the photograph proved disappointing. What he did gain was an appreciation of why that position on the ship used to be called "the widow maker."
Pursuing Endeavour around Fiordland in light aircraft provided excitement, too. "After an evening shoot, our floatplane couldn't find its way back across the mountains to Te Anau because of cloud and darkness. Fortunately, the red tail light of a helicopter materialised in the nick of time back over a pass. Had it not been for that chopper we would have been in real trouble."
On board ship, Mason was expected to help with the sailing duties. His least favourite job? Tarring the rigging ropes with a mixture that caused them to stay slippery for a day or two afterwards, increasing the hazards of going aloft. But there were uplifting moments, too. "I'll never forget coming on deck at 2 A.M. to go on watch as we headed south from Kaikoura, and seeing the brilliance of the stars through the hatch, spangling the rigging. Imagine gazing at those slowly changing patterns of stars for weeks or months on end. Seeing a whale from the top of a mast and being able to holler 'Thar she blows!' was pretty special, too."
Pickersgill Harbour in Dusky Sound, unchanged since the time of Cook—even down to the very tree branch that Resolution is said to have tied up to more than two centuries ago—imparted a unique sense of stepping into history.
So, too, did being ashore with local Maori as Endeavour hove into view at Anaura Bay. "They seemed to be just as flabbergasted at the spectacle as their ancestors were when Cook arrived, and I realised that most of us now in this technological age have no more clues about sailing a ship of that type than the Maoris did then."
[chapter-break]
Underwater photographers Kim Westerskov and Darryl Torckler have each made a number of visits to Vava'u in their quest for peerless images of humpback whales. On their second visit in the winter of 1994, they an encounter which they count unique in their many and varied experiences with wildlife. Torckler spotted a small spout a kilometre distant, which proved to emanate from a four- or five-metre calf accompanied by its mother. The whales seemed untroubled by the approach of the yacht the two had chartered, and both divers carefully entered the water. After some minutes they were able to pick out the form of the motionless mother about 20 metres below in the clear water. To their astonishment, the baby appeared from beneath the mother and swam directly towards Torckler.
"For a while I photographed its approach, but then, overwhelmed by its closeness, I somehow forgot to keep taking pictures. When it was only a metre away, the whale veered slightly to one side and picked me up on its pectoral fluke and carried me through the water. The calf's eye, the size of a tennis ball, was scrutinising me thoroughly, and I found this soothing, because although just an infant, the creature was so much bigger than me.
"As I moved away from the whale to try and take some photos, the camera jammed. While I struggled to get it working, the whale swam over to Kim and picked him up in similar fashion on its other pectoral fluke. I watched while he, too, had the ride of a lifetime. Neither of us could believe we'd had such a wonderfully close encounter. Humpbacks are often inquisitive, and may approach you in the water, but usually only for a few seconds before diving steeply away."
Westerskov's photograph of the incident appears in the advertisement on page 49.
[chapter-break]
While the waters of Tonga call to whale photographers, it is the beech forests and riverbanks of the Greenstone Valley which draw Tony Maturin. For seven summers, Maturin has served as a but warden of McKellar Hut, on the Greenstone Track, collecting the modest accommodation fees levied by the Department of Conservation, answering trampers' questions about the track route and the area and being part of the tramper safety radio network.
For five of those years he fished the Greenstone River, regarded as one of the best trout rivers in the South Island, but gave up the sport after deciding that he had "no right to hassle a little animal for my own amusement."
"Now I fish for pictures," he says.
"Being able to tell the story of this valley through pictures has given me great satisfaction."
The former high country musterer and farmer has other stories to tell, too. His book Pilgrimage to Chajul: Tales From Guatemala, documenting the human tragedy of that country, will be published in July.
Death squads and political corruption may seem a far cry from the life cycle of a mayfly or the flowering of a greenhood orchid, but perhaps there similarities. The fragility of human life, the vulnerability of natural habitats—the scales may be different, but both stories need to be told.

After 76 years of ministering to the nation's children, health camps have become a uniquely New Zealand institution. However, today's health authorities—awash with reformist zeal—are questioning whether the camps still have a role in providing "healthy bodies and solid citizens," the founding aims of the movement.

Nestled between the mountains of the Main Divide and Lake Wakatipu, the Greenstone Valley is verdant home to a wealth of wildlife and plants. It is also something of a spiritual home for former high country shepherd Tony Maturin, who has worked as a part-time Department of Conservation hut warden in the valley for the last seven summers, assisting trampers on the Greenstone Track, recording the natural history of the area and reflecting on the beauty of it all.